Remember when I mentioned that it was all going too smoothly? Well I was right. Saturday was the inspection on our new house. Or the house we were hoping would be our new house. We already knew that there was work needed on the well, roof, barn and a ton of cosmetic issues. What we didn’t know until 3 hours into the inspection was that the house has unwelcome squatters. Thousands of them.
That my friends is an anobiid beetle. Thanks to their overwhelming work on the understructure of the farmhouse we will not be it’s new owners. Our inspector thinks that this infestation is possibly decades old and that it’s been pretty much uncontrolled that whole time.
At this point they’ve seriously damaged most of the posts, beams and floor joists that support the house. The only remedy is to jack up the house, put in a new foundation, dig out the dirt that caused the ideal conditions and replace the substructure. All to the tune of an estimated $30,000 – 50,000.
We are fortunate that our inspector (whom we’ve used several times now) is extremely thorough and knowledgeable. This might be the best $350 we’ve spent in a long time. The current owners, who were apparently unaware of the problem, are not nearly so fortunate. Their dreams of making enough money off this house to mostly fund their next one have gone up in a cloud of sawdust, literally.
We’re in the process of formally terminating our contract on the house and regrouping. There’s been interest in our house, but not overwhelmingly. We’ve got time to get our act together and find another “perfect” place.
Nasty! Glad you found the little buggers. I would be having nightmares if I’d moved in and found them later (about the creepy-crawlies AND the money!). You’ll find the right one at the right time, bug-free!
Ouch, so sorry to hear that news. I am a huge believer in home inspectors, even though our inspector missed a fledgling infestation of carpenter ants in our old porch. Fortunately, we found them before they had moved beyond the deck, and we got to build ourselves a better deck.
Good luck with the hunt!
OMG! Now I’m freaked out about my house, which is an older house. It was inspected, of course. If the inspector made recommendations about little details, I suppose he would have found any bugs. (I hope, I hope.) Anyway, you will surely find something else that you love. Those poor, poor people who wanted to sell.
ack! glad you found out before committing!
$30-$50K for all that structural work sounds like a bargain; I think they should take your inspector’s bid and run with it. (Not sure if pest inspections are legally binding bids in WA the way they are in CA, but if so…)
Then they can sell you the house after the work’s done
Yikes, that sounds awful. Luckily you found it before you purchased the home. That could have been a pricey issue.